Perhaps these prospects will all turn into All-Star players (although most prospects the Braves trade don't live up to their potential) but couldn't the Pirates at least wait until they go into the tank before quitting on the season? And, it is not like McLouth is a free agent after this year either. If you're not even going to try when you are only 6 games out at the beginning of June, why bother fielding a team?From the Braves perspective, this gives them a solid bat that they desperately needed. If their pitching can stay healthy and Hudson comes back as even a shadow of his former self in the second half, they should turn the NL East into a 3 team race.

Man Pittsburgh - if flippin' June. McLouth is under contract for the next 2.5 seasons - why move him? I dunno - maybe they have a prospect in CF they're dying to see? Any Indianapolis Indians followers out there?

Originally posted by djpMan Pittsburgh - if flippin' June. McLouth is under contract for the next 2.5 seasons - why move him? I dunno - maybe they have a prospect in CF they're dying to see? Any Indianapolis Indians followers out there?

The Yahoo article linked above says he's named Andrew McCutchen. Whether he's really that good, or they're just trying to sell that there's a reason it's OK to trade McLouth, I can't say.

Originally posted by djpMan Pittsburgh - if flippin' June. McLouth is under contract for the next 2.5 seasons - why move him? I dunno - maybe they have a prospect in CF they're dying to see? Any Indianapolis Indians followers out there?

The Yahoo article linked above says he's named Andrew McCutchen. Whether he's really that good, or they're just trying to sell that there's a reason it's OK to trade McLouth, I can't say.

McCutcheon's one of the highest touted prospects in the majors right now ... That said, I don't think he's got superstar written all over him. He can hit and run, but he lacks serious power.

The Braves prospects:

- Gorkys Hernandez is the best of the crew. He's unnecessary with McLouth going to Atlanta and Schafer still getting more chances later - but he's got some good leather in centrefield. No real power or crazy amounts of speed though.

- Charlie Morton will be a back of the rotation kinda guy. There is nothing special here.

- Jeff "John" Locke will be lucky to sustain any kind of longetivity in the majors. He's better to spend time trying to plant bombs on the mound in the hopes of opening up the secret hatch buried beneath it than to pretend to be someone who belongs on a major league roster.

McCutchen's pretty good and they've been big on him for a few years now. If nothing else, I saw him in Spring Training in 2007 and was impressed with his speed and defense. The Bucs would've brought him up earlier, but they've been saying: "when he does come up, we want him to stay".

An outfield of Nyjer Morgan- Nate McLouth - Andrew McCutchen would have been a Buc fan's dream. But now we're left with Morgan/McCutchen/Brandon Moss. Although I wouldn't be surprised if Delmon Young or Craig Monroe end up in Moss's spot. Ideally, it would've been nice to see Moss shipped out, but no team is going to trade for leftovers (well... the Bucs would have, if Dave Littlefield was still around).

Scary part is: now that McLouth's gone, you have to wonder who's next. Zach Duke, Freddy Sanchez and Jack Wilson shouldn't get too comfy. Which would be a shame, because as much as the Pirates talk about "building for a championship-caliber team", they've been selling those guys as cornerstones of that movement for the past few years.

My sister, a Pirates fan, is taking a very positive approach with this trade because she thinks that Huntington is collecting prospects and supposedly his goal is not just to have a winning season in a year or two but to be a contender in four or five and if that means giving up their current good players then so be it.

That's a nice thing to say but I think the Pirates fans and players would just like to see a winning season. I do think McCutchen is going to be pretty good. Not much power but can hit, run and play very good defense. I don't know about Nyjer or Moss' defense but McLouth and McCutchen together would've been a great defensive outfield.

If they had kept McLouth and brought up with McCutchen to go with Sanchez, Ad. Laroche, An. Laroche, and Nyjer plus Doumit when he comes back from injury it could have been a pretty nice lineup.

Also if Huntington tried to just reach .500 in the next two or three years then he probably keeps his job long enough to do more. If he doesn't have a winning team until 4 or 5 years from now then he maybe doesn't even keep the job that long. Especially now that the players seemed pretty pissed. Adam Laroche's comments after last night's game sounded like a guy that was just ready to completely give up and even though I'm all for competing at all times no matter what the situation it's got to be pretty tough to be motivated to play for that franchise.

I went back and re-read their pre-season assessment of the Pirates. I'm paraphrasing here, but they basically called his contract a mistake and said the best thing the team could do would be to move him.

If you are interested I can go find it and type up what they actually said.

I went back and re-read their pre-season assessment of the Pirates. I'm paraphrasing here, but they basically called his contract a mistake and said the best thing the team could do would be to move him.

If you are interested I can go find it and type up what they actually said.

Yeah, I still get SI. I know.

There's no shame in getting SI. I thought that magazine was all done a few years ago, but they do some real good in depth stuff on players and events that you just don't see much of on the net. I would subscribe to that over ESPN the magazine.

... which leads me to my ESPN link where the Pirates GM explains the reasoning or at least spins the trade Click Here (sports.espn.go.com)

I really don't see the McLouth ceiling being much higher than we have already seen, but I can still see why Pirates fans would be angry.